McGurk, Patrick
(2011)
The contingent role of management and leadership development for middle managers: cases of organisational change from the public services.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis investigates the contribution of management and leadership
development (MLD) for middle managers. Its central hypothesis is that MLD plays
an important role in enabling strategic change through middle managers, but that
greater contextualisation is required to understand the precise nature of its effects
and its limitations. The thesis builds on organisational contingency theory (Mintzberg
1979) to develop and test a model of changes to middle management roles and
associated outcomes of MLD.
The thesis differentiates between the MLD options of management development,
leader development and leadership development (Day 2001) and hypothesises a
range of MLD outcomes across organisational types. For its empirical base, the
thesis focuses on public service organisations (PSOs), in which substantial
investments in MLD have been made at all levels of management in recent years.
Three case studies show how, as PSOs seek greater flexibility, the devolution of a
broader range of responsibilities to middle managers creates various development
needs according to different directions of organisational change.
The thesis finds that: i) when the machine bureaucracy divisionalises, investment in
line management training makes a significant contribution to organisational stability,
while leader development is most effective in the customer-facing divisions of the
business; ii) when the safety bureaucracy professionalises, investment in
competence-based management development and leader development can
successfully promote more participatory forms of management, but that the potential
for political obstacles to MLD is accentuated; and iii) when the professional
bureaucracy adhocratises, investment in MLD makes a significant contribution to
balancing ongoing organisational effectiveness with the building of adaptive capacity
for the future.
The thesis adds to academic knowledge of MLD options and their expected
outcomes. The thesis also develops the academic literature by contextualising
changes to middle management roles and explaining the contingent role of MLD in
organisational change.
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